Professor David Deakins holds a Chair in Small Business in the School of Management, Massey University and is Director of the New Zealand Centre for SME Research (NZSMERC), a research centre in the College of Business. He joined the Centre in September 2009 after spending 15 years at the former University of Paisley in Scotland, where his research interests covered many aspects of small fi rm innovation, growth and development, but focused on access to fi nance and ethnic minority entrepreneurship. While at Paisley he set up the Paisley Enterprise Research Centre and completed projects for the Scottish Government on women's enterprise, minority ethnic enterprise and SMEs' access to bank finance. At NZSMERC he has led projects for the New Zealand Government's Inland Revenue Department and Ministry of Economic Development.
Dr. Mark Freel is Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the Mark R. Bruneau Fellow for Global Business and Entrepreneurship at the Tefler School of Management, University of Ottawa, Canada.